


Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

by SegaBarrett



Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elam wakes up into himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheDoodyPoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoodyPoo/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Hell on Wheels and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: AU end of 4x07, "Elam Ferguson".

Elam Ferguson awoke to the worst headache he’d ever had in his life. And over the past few months, there had been pretty steep competition.

But he’d woken up Elam Ferguson, which was a departure from recent memory. He had been sleepwalking before, and some of the things he’d done he could only hope was a dream. 

How had he gotten here?

It took him a long time to pull himself up into a sitting position, arms cradled around his legs. He realized that he could only see out of one of his eyes. 

Elam’s throat was dry. He looked around, hoping that wherever he had woken up, it was somewhere he could get water. It was like he had gone years without it, years hidden under a sand-drift, trying to claw his way to the surface.

He heard the creak of a door opening. 

A woman with dark hair and creamy white skin stepped in, holding a baby in her arms. Elam didn’t recognize her. Could she have been the woman he’d dragged back to Cheyenne on a leash? In his haze, one brown-haired white lady blurred into another, especially only being able to see out of one eye. That woman hadn’t stopped talking, though, and this one seemed to be more given to not talking at all. She’d been staring at him for minutes that seemed like hours.

“You’re up,” she said finally, without much emotion. “I’ll go tell Cullen.”

“Wait,” Elam murmured. “Who’re you?”

“His wife,” the woman replied. She glided out of the room, silently. A moment later, Elam could hear Cullen’s boots but couldn’t quite see him. It hurt too much to turn his head. There was something in his chest, too. Something hurt there, near his heart. It burned.

“Bohannon,” Elam whispered. He could remember bits and pieces of the fight, slivers of it, but it felt more like he’d watched it than he had actually been a part of it. But he could see Bohannon as he’d been before he left to go find him clear as day, in his mind’s eye. Something swelled inside him. 

“Mr. Ferguson,” came Cullen’s drawl. “You’re awake.”

“Not happy to be,” Elam murmured, “Feel like a wagon ran me over.”

“Gettin’ stabbed’ll do that to ya.”

“Stabbed?” Elam blinked to try and center his vision, getting frustrated. His head seared again. 

“Had to. You were about to give me a cleaner shave than I’m used to.”

Elam tried to turn his head again, but Cullen saved him the trouble by moving into view and crouching in front of him. “Your Eva helped stitch you up. Thought you were a goner myself, but she’s good at this nursing business.”

“Eva,” Elam whispered. “Where she at?”

“She ain’t ready. Don’t know if she’ll ever be. And neither are you. Y’nearly hurt her out there, you know. You wanted to.”

“Don’t wanna hurt Eva,” Elam slurred, “Jus’ don’t understand why she…” His mind was fuzzy, couldn’t think of the rest of his sentence, just remembered that Eva had taken something from him that he’d never get back, something that had ripped out a piece of his heart long before the knife or even the claws of that bear.

“Elam, you need a rest,” Cullen told him. “Rest up. We’ll talk soon. No one’s coming to get you, they’d have to go through me. So you just rest now.” There was something in his eyes that unnerved Elam; he looked as if he’d been crying. 

He shut his eyes. As much as he didn’t want to sleep, not with all this to process, just being awake was tiring him out. A rest could do him good.

***

Elam’s earliest memory was of his mother singing to him. It was the only memory he had of her, and he didn’t know what had happened to her, whether she’d died or been sold or ran off. He generally assumed it was the last one, given how his master used to sulk like a schoolboy whenever her name came up. Annabel. It was like he assumed she’d come back to him eventually because things were so great with him. 

That and the way he treated Elam like he was some kind of puppy, teaching him what he thought were entertaining tricks to amuse his snooty friends but which Elam had known were the keys to escape, to freedom. To a life.

She used to sing beautiful songs in his ear.

The only sound as sweet as that was Eva telling him that she loved him. But it had always been so complicated. The pleasure had always been dipped in a coat of pain.

***

He woke up into being Elam Ferguson, and he was in the arms of Cullen Bohannon. He was too tired to fight it, but he didn’t know what Bohannon’s arms were doing draped over his shoulders. Maybe he had been dying, or something. Maybe he’d been choking.

But no, he didn’t feel a tightness in his throat, only in his chest where his still burned. And his cheeks were damp. No, no, he could not cry in front of this man. The man who’d lied when he’d said he had freed all his slaves. 

He wouldn’t ever own Elam; he would be sure of that. No one ever had, not really. His heart had always been free, and full of hate.

“You were thrashin’ around in your sleep,” Bohannon told him, and Elam tried to glare at him with his good eye. “I was afraid you’d hurt yourself. Had to steady ya.” Bohannon’s gaze was filled with what looked like embarrassment, like Elam had caught him thinking something he shouldn’t have been. 

Elam blinked. His eyes, both of them, felt crusty, like dirt had gotten into them. His arms weren’t quite working to rub them, either. Where were his arms? They were there, he could feel them, but not move them quite yet.

He let out a growl of frustration. He didn’t want to be dependent on this man.

Yet their fates had been linked now, and seemed as if they always would be. When he’d come back in a haze, come back as a slave-trading bear-killer, Bohannon had come to him. Come to him and looked into his eye and told him to remember who he was.

He could still hear those words in his head, like they were far away but just coming through. 

“Can’t hurt myself any more than I already am,” Elam muttered, finally able to move his hand and only succeeding in draping it over the wound in his chest.

“I’m sorry, Elam.”

“Bohannon… For once…” Elam looked at him, and he very slowly sat up. His head was so heavy, but he managed to keep it upright. He had to hold his own, even now. “I never wanted your apology. I don’t know what I want from you.”

Before Elam could say anything else, Cullen’s lips were pressed against his. Elam’s arm flew up again, but instead of pushing Cullen off and away, he looped his arm around his back.

His skull was rattling with questions, wondering how he could do this, with this man of all people, a slaveowner, a Confederate, Cullen fucking Bohannon of all people.

But he was the person who seemed to bring out Elam, the man who had brought him out of his new identity, the one without a conscience and only an instinct to kill and conquer. To enslave.

It was easier to be that, to be the Bear Killer.

But it was right to be Elam Ferguson. 

He let his tongue slide into Cullen’s mouth. Cullen’s tongue met his. His tongue was so warm. So wet.

His head was so hazy, but it felt good. 

They broke apart.

“Bohannon,” Elam mumbled.

“We shouldn’t do this. Not now. I should let you rest.”

“I’ve been resting too long.” Elam remembered after the bear, the weeks, the weeks of just sleep and pain and wondering if Eva would ever come back. It had always been Eva, or had it? Maybe sometimes he’d allowed himself to think of Bohannon. But if Bohannon had been lost, then so was he. Hadn’t that been his mission, to find the man, take him back from the Mormons?

Apparently he had found his own way back. And they shouldn’t do this, whatever they were doing, in front of Bohannon’s wife. 

He should look for Eva. 

“I should go.” Elam sat up more, threw his hands in his lap. 

“Go where?” Bohannon asked. “You’ve been stabbed. What you need is to lie down. What I just did… it’s a mistake. I won’t do it again. Eva’s gon’ want to see you when you’re up to it, and I think you owe it to her.”

“Thought you said she wasn’t ready.”

Cullen shrugged.

“She will be. In time. She loves you. She’s been through it since you disappeared. I heard… heard about it.” He paused, as if there was some information hanging in the air, information that he didn’t think Elam was well enough to hear.  
Elam might have fought him if he were well enough to, but right now, he’d trust his friend’s judgment. Or was friend the right word, even, after what they’d just done?

He could hear Cullen’s words as he tried to reason with him, the plea in it – friends always. Did Cullen wish them to be something deeper than friends? Did Elam himself wish it?

“You just tell her I asked after her,” he continued, because to speak of Eva was to push these feelings for Cullen aside. Because it couldn’t be possible that he loved them both, could it? There was only one true love of a person’s life. 

That’s what his mother would have said.

***

“Elam, my beautiful Elam.” She was holding him in her arms, whispering his name. “I might have to go away soon. But I promise I will always love you. No matter where you are, no matter what you do. Through your whole life, I’m going to always have you in my heart.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“But where are you going?”

“Just… away. But not far away. Because I promise, I’m never going to be far away.”

Elam’s eyes had gone wide, but he stayed silent. He knew that he couldn’t fight this. It was just going to be another thing that had to happen, in a long list of things he was too young to understand.

“I love you, Elam.”

“Love you, Mama,” Elam had whispered back.

***

“Bohannon?” Elam asked as he came out of it. 

“Yeah?” Cullen retorted. Elam was able to sit up a little more, now, his ears ringing with his own words – I cannot be killed, I am Bear-Killer – and he wanted to snort. Yeah, he’d had a pretty good run, what with nearly getting killed more times than he could count, but invincible? He didn’t think so. A combination of skill and dumb luck.

And Cullen Bohannon, the man he’d tried to chase away. The man he couldn’t stay alive without.

It wasn’t something he wanted. He wanted to be free. Not dependent on anyone, not beholden to anyone. Not a slave to any person or any emotion.

It was a paradox. 

Those who had asked whether Elam was Cullen’s “man” might have been sniffing around an answer they couldn’t have begun to understand.

Another thought in his head – everything I name leaves me. It was true. One day, Cullen Bohannon would leave. He’d probably leave bloody, if Elam didn’t leave first. 

Elam reached out and grabbed Cullen’s hand in his.

“Don’t leave.”

But not yet. This wasn’t like before. They wouldn’t pull him away from him, not yet, not yet. 

There was blood on Elam’s palm, and on Cullen’s too. It was funny how blood got everywhere. He couldn’t tell whose it was. It was funny how blood looked so similar.

His heart was pumping, as if Cullen’s blood too was flowing into Elam’s veins.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” With a shake of his head of shaggy hair, Cullen smiled at him.

Maybe with Cullen Bohannon by his side, he could be invincible as Elam Ferguson.


End file.
